Slayer Releases “Repentless”

Legendary thrash metal band Slayer has released its eleventh studio album, Repentless.

According to bassist and vocalist Tom Araya some material for the album was written prior to the May 2013 death of band co-founder and co-guitarist Jeff Hanneman. Gary Holt (Exodus) started playing with Slayer back in 2011 and handled guitar parts on Repentless.

With the loss of Hanneman, Araya told Noisey: Music by Vice he and guitarist/songwriter Kerry King had to redefine their musical relationship. “I was apprehensive about how this record was going to come together, and so we sat down, we communicated, we shared our feelings, I shared my feelings about how I wanted to move forward if we were going to finish the record. We shook hands and we said “Okay, let’s do this record,” and we went in there.

“I did what I did, and we had a great producer that listened to what I was doing, and really liked the stuff that I was doing, and who said ‘No, this sounds really great, we’re not changing anything.’ Kerry was able to pull a couple of rabbits out of his hat and wrote some slower, heavier music, too; he’s written the heavy stuff before, it’s not like he hasn’t, but both heavy songs kind of just came together in the studio. In the beginning, you’re like ‘Holy shit, what’s this gonna sound like?’ and then in the end it was like ‘Okay, this is good, this is Slayer.’”